Scholarly and scientific research and writing involves the rigorous and often tedious process of research, literature review, and writing. When researching, individuals search through one or more physical or electronic databases for information on their topic of interest. Their search can uncover material in books, journal articles, periodicals, and other published works. In some disciplines, particularly in some academic disciplines, this step may necessitate that a researcher searches through multiple separate databases to ensure that they have identified all relevant publications on their topic of interest in order to gain a complete understand of the state of knowledge on a given topic. Frequently this means that a researcher will search through largely redundant databases to identify any unique works published in each database. This step may identify tens or even hundreds of potentially relevant publications.
After relevant publications are identified, the researcher must review these materials to determine if and how each will be used in a new publication. This type of literature review can be very labor intensive, requiring the reviewer to read through and filter each identified work. Each reviewer may have different preferences for reviewing publications. For instance, some may save each document in an electronic format and review it on a computer, while others may print out physical copies that they manually highlight and annotate. Ultimately, the set of works is narrowed down, categorized, and a list of works to be used in the new publication is identified. In some cases, the research and review processes consumes at least half of the time dedicated to the research and writing process.
Next, a new publication is conceptualized and written. In the writing process, authors may use bibliographic citations to reference to the publications identified in their research. The accurate insertion of these citations, which typically follow strict formatting conventions, can be time consuming for authors and requires frequent reference to the notes made in the literature review process as well as to citation formatting guidelines. Frequently citations errors are made in new papers, despite the author's best efforts to avoid them.
Each step of the research and writing process is further complicated when multiple individuals are involved, which is frequently the case in university-level academic research and writing. Each additional individual adds difficulty to the task of collaborating the research, literature review, and writing steps.
The various aspects of the present invention, described herein, provide an apparatus, system, and method that can facilitate the process of research, literature review, and writing as well as the collaborating this process between multiple authors and/or researchers. The present invention also provides a method and apparatus for processing bibliographic citations within a paper.